Artist, illustrator and avid “Star Trek” enthusiast Juan Ortiz has channeled his love for Gene Roddenberry’s brainchild in a unique, inspiring way, creating beautiful retro-inspired images for each of the 79 episodes from the 1960s series and the original pilot. A new book, “Star Trek: The Art of Juan Ortiz” (Titan), out Tuesday, collects his work.

Hero Complex readers can check out a selection of his handiwork in the gallery above. We also asked him to describe the images and to share his thoughts on the selection of episodes that inspired him — his comments follow.

“The Mark of Gideon”: “It was an interesting episode, but I was left confounded at the end. The overpopulation could have been solved by removing a part of the population to an off-world colony.”

“Wink of an Eye”: “The shadowy figure is actually a statue from the start of the episode. Sometimes I wonder if that’s what the aliens were really meant to look like if ‘Star Trek’ had not been held back by cost and special effects limitations of the time. The circles indicate the sound waves generated by the Scalosians.”

“Dagger of the Mind”: “This is a stylized version of the patch worn by the doctor in the episode. The idea behind the poster came from the early days of TV. Dramas were performed live, so they were actually plays being filmed. I tried to give this poster an old Playbill look.”

“This Side of Paradise”: “This episode is the opposite of paradise lost, paradise regained. I think it was a statement on the drug use of the ’60s, that a false paradise is no substitute for reality, even with all its flaws. The hand symbolically represents Spock, having rejected love, reaching out from paradise for life aboard the Enterprise, and his pursuit of logic. (The music for the love scene with Spock is a classic.)”

“The Trouble With Tribbles”: “This is an off-beat, light hearted, maybe even comedic episode. So I thought about some of the movie comedies that I like from the ’60s, like “It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World,” where everyone is just having a ball. The idea for the poster was the easy part. Creating all those Tribbles, placing them together, sizing them and making sure the same colors did not overlap each other was the hard part. What was even worse, I lost access to my original file and only had a jpg, so I retraced and recreated the poster in Illustrator. Those Tribbles really are trouble, after all.”